https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=ErSm1l_XFyY
Welcome everyone to another Voices with Ravik. I’m very excited about this because I get to introduce all of you to two people who have become increasingly important to me. They worked with me on and Chris and it contributed a really beautiful chapter to inner and outer dialogues. And without further ado, I’m just going to let them introduce themselves. This is Thomas and Elizabeth. Please introduce yourselves and talk about what you’re doing at Evolve. And I think that’ll make it readily apparent to people watching this video why I’m so excited about this. Oh, okay. Thanks so much, John. And it’s great to be here and to be introduced to your audience. I’m Elizabeth Diebold and I’m a by training I’m a developmental psychologist, I studied human development at Harvard, and my special my focus was on gender development and it was part of a lifelong search to figure out how do we get beyond the kind of binary composition that seems to be at the at the foundation of the idea of masculine and feminine and and the the persons that then we become and what that does to human dynamics and so forth and and you could say in some ways, skipping to the end. I think that the result of that search has led me to this work with the awakened we that to realizing that that this that this this form of identity is so deeply embedded in our structures of knowledge in our social structures in our psyches, that that a whole ground is needed in order to shift who we are as as human beings to be able to collaborate at an at an existential level with the powers of creation and that is really what this, the, the, the we space work and the emergent dialogue work that we do is is about is, is it catalyzing a different kind of of creativity between human beings that forces are accustomed ways of being male and female to it jolts them and brings us together in a different in a different ground. So I’ll, I’ll end that way. Before Thomas I just want to say I think you’ve given me the title for this episode I’m going to call it catalyzing the awakened we. Nice. Thank you for that. Thomas. Yes, my name is Thomas dining. I’m a philosopher by training study philosophy University of Vienna and Austria. And since my days, where I was studying philosophy I’m interested in the connection between inner development and the evolution of culture, cultural history, and I created together with Elizabeth, a magazine that we have here in Germany, it’s called the It has a subtitle magazine for consciousness and culture. And this is part of our work and other part of our work that is as important as a form of dialogue that we developed together since the last 2025 years in different forms that we now call emerging dialogue that is very much about how we can come together in a dialogical form in small settings, but also as a form of cultural development, where we think that we spaces are down dialogous to use your term is something that is of cultural importance that is of tremendous importance for our time and for the evolution of our time. And it’s not, and it’s nothing short than the shift in identity, identity. In fact, just to say that one term that we developed for our work is the term trends individuation. And what we mean that we see the cultural development of the last, at least last three years very much also as a development of human individuation. And what we experiencing right now is kind of a turning point, not to go, not to lose individuation, but to basically transform integration to a higher sphere, that we call trends in division is something in a Hegelian move of, of holding and going beyond. Right, and you could call it to use another big word as a second axle agent or something. Yeah, yeah, that’s just coming to mind that the second axle age I just I just picked up a book. I remember the author and I apologize for that we’re called practicing transcendence is a college trying to argue about, you know, how we need to go back and somehow learn how to repractice the access to transcendence that was given to us in the actual age but in a way that’s responsive to the meaning crisis of our times. And so that sounds very convergent with what you just said Thomas. I mean this is so interesting. And I’ll just let you know that how this how we met is that I can’t remember if it was Elizabeth or Thomas, we wanted you reached out to me an email and said you were watching my work if so, there was just so much convergence that we never met or spoken, and that convergence was just really powerful and prominent for me and it’s always been very exciting. So, um, perhaps, I mean you guys have said some very tantalizing things in a good way. Perhaps I would ask you both to maybe unpack. What, what the emergent deal logos looks like. What’s that practice look like how did you come to it. How does it, how does it touch on both the things you, you both talked about, you know that the transformation of identity trends individuation, and also this way of re situating consciousness and culture with respect to each other. How does that, how does the, how does the deal logos or what you call emergent dialogue. How does it go from an abstract idea that we’re talking about to a lived transformative process. I would start with a different term, because what happened in the last 30 or 40 years is also kind of revolution our culture which I would call the mindfulness revolution. Yes, yes. And the mindful mindfulness revolution. Basically, I came a tremendous way. It wasn’t a fringe kind of 30 years ago. Now you can study in any university. Yes, meditation mindfulness. It is something that you do it in big companies. Yes, yes. Where we see that we need to train ourselves to be in a different way in the world than our usual subject object relationship. Yes, just to say that. And what our work and dialogue is about in the way we understand it that there is a second step in the mindfulness revolution. Yes, yes, I would call from individual to collective mindfulness. Right, right. Be together in a mindful way, where we are able to connect with each other in a different way than we’re deeply used to which basically here I am as a subject, and here you as an object or maybe as a you in a way. In this kind of separate, there’s a different way of being present together, the changes are being in the world. And I like to say that we didn’t think about this, and then come up with it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that this was that we were part of a spiritual community that that had as its goal to to trigger a kind of collective collective enlightenment, if you will. And that that ended up collapsing because of the things that often cause spiritual collapse, power issues and so forth. But, but part of what what Thomas and I have done is, we, I think because we both had a background in in social, social change, human development, psychology, Thomas was a therapist, I’m a developmental psychologist, he was an activist, I was an activist. And that we were we were tantalized by and deeply compelled by the the cultural implications of what we were discovering. And so we have continued to pursue and try to and work to sense make. Yeah, yeah, in a larger way from this experience of an opening that lives between us. Yes. You know, so there’s an opening in consciousness that is tremendously exhilarating, that where one glimpses a wholeness that one has not had had access to on one’s own. There’s a there’s a coherence and wholeness that that enters into one’s one’s being that is that is enormously, people call it healing. It’s, it’s, it’s, it points to a possibility, people, you know, either there’s a sense of, oh, my God, I didn’t know that that was possible for human beings to meet at this level, which is beyond the mind and fully embodied in being. But so we’ve been it’s like, well, what makes that work? And we’ve been conducting really a lab. Yeah, in this with a with a core group of people who have been by our side for for over a decade, over over a decade in this incarnation. And for the 25 years, we’ve been exploring this in order to really work and find out what because you one feels that this one wants something, one feels that there is that there is a volition in in this in this the space that comes alive between us, that it is it is it is leading us somewhere. And how do we how do we make ourselves available to be led by this creative intelligence has been like, are what we’ve been exploring and experimenting with. Thank you for both of you. So let me try and collect a couple things together. I’ll keep having to do this because I want you guys to keep doing what you’re doing. So keep doing that. So the Thomas brings in this idea of a second stage, perhaps even a second dimension of mindfulness. I think maybe talking about a dimension, I think it’s important because it’s not just sort of more. There’s a there’s a there’s a qualitative change. And I think that I’d like to possibly explore with you some of the related ideas I have because there is a predictive relationship between mindfulness and the flow state, the idea of collective flow, as well as collective mindfulness. And then that what you said, Elizabeth about, right, people sense a new way of being. And it has, it has almost a vocational, I sort of prefer that over volitional. Right. It has sort of more vocational in the sense that it’s calling us, it’s drawing us, leading us somewhere. And I’ve been impressed. And I take it you guys have been too. You know, by how often in these practices, people feel something like the presence of a spiritual dimension or spiritual presence without sounding hokey or spooky. They, they know there’s something more at work. And then what’s interested me about that are two things. One is the existential aspect, bringing those two together because of the relationship between mindfulness and the cultivation of wisdom, for example, and many wisdom traditions is how people can not always because I’ve been in these situations where people are satisfied just with the fact that they’re able to bring those two things together. But I’ve also seen and experienced, I’ve also been doing participant experimentation, as you think that’s what we could call it, how people go from an intimacy with each other to an intimacy with the other. There’s a fundamental way in which the world is now disclosed to them. They’re connected to the world. They see possibilities in the world. They see possibilities in the world. They see possibilities in the world. How people go from an intimacy with each other to an intimacy through that we space to something more like being or reality that they deserve. There’s a fundamental way in which the world is now disclosed to them. They’re connected to the world. They see possibilities not only in themselves and in other people, but they realize possibilities in the world, if I can put it that way. And so there’s that existential aspect. And then the other thing that, of course, you knew I was going to say this, I’m really interested in the cognitive science of all of this. What’s going on. And if we step aside from mythopoetic language, which I think is completely appropriate when people are practicing and training, and I’m not telling people how they should talk, I want to make that really clear. And I’m not doing that. But that’s different from I want to understand what’s going on there. And can we use some of the cutting edge cognitive science to talk about these processes, hopefully to help clarify them, and perhaps one hopes, you know, give some science that could help improve the practices in a manner. So those are two things I’d be interested in sort of opening up with you more. What about the first point because I know Thomas, I mean, we’ve talked, we’ve spoken frequently. I mean, you’re very, you’re like Guy, Guy Sendstock, in that, you know, there’s a Heideggerian background to this. And, of course, that Heideggerian background has had a huge influence on what’s called 4E cognitive science. How would you respond to what I said about, there can be a, I don’t know what to call it, a second movement within the WeSpace where people go from just inter to trans, right? There’s the WeSpace. And instead of just relating to the WeSpace, they, and I mean this sort of properly, they relate through the WeSpace to, right? So could you comment? In fact, I’m very grateful that you’re going there because I think this is the decisive ingredients that really opens the key to this. And it’s very easy to miss also because when we talk about WeSpace, this is kind of a dangerous term because everyone thinks I know what a WeSpace is. We all know what WeSpaces are. We all times, everyone is all the time in a WeSpace. So we know what it is until some time it’s true. But there are different WeSpaces. And I think it’s really important to see that there are differences that are decisive. What you are pointing to, I think is really what makes it work. And usually when we are in a normal WeSpace, the way we perceive a WeSpace is that I’m here, Thomas, and here’s Elizabeth, and here you, John. If we have a good WeSpace, I’m aware of you, which is already a lot. I’m not autistic and just basically talking to myself and using you kind of as someone who is basically participating just in my world. I’m able to be aware. I have an opening to an eye to eye relationship to both of you. And that’s already a lot. That’s already. But there’s something different there. From Gestapo psychology, we know that the whole is bigger than the sum of the parts. And that’s true also for the experience of a dialogue of a WeSpace. And there’s something possible when I experienced this WeSpace not just from the Thomas perspective, but somehow I’m kind of getting inside the whole that this dialogue is emerging in and experience that I’m not separate from that. And if you want to use mythopoetic language, for me, it’s even more than mythopoetic. It has some reality. It looks like you can look through the wholeness of this WeSpace. I change your perspective. I’m not only seeing it from my Thomas perspective. There’s a wholeness opening up where the participants of the WeSpace are there that they are together in something. One word that we use for that, it’s a co-consciousness. My consciousness and your consciousness don’t seem to be separate as they usually are. They sometimes call it also the third factor. Or we also say that the WeSpace space becomes self-aware. Like the individual. I mean, I have been, or we as a species have been individual in some way, much before we have been aware that we are individual. And every child you can experience that a child is a child, but at a certain age a child is able to say I and mean something with that. And also in the WeSpace there is the possibility that all of a sudden we are self-aware of the wholeness that is emerging with us and through us. And that creates a certain dynamic that is very creative, co-creative and has a dynamic, which also many people find very intriguing because it brings myself and everyone beyond yourself. And this emergent power of it is also part of why we call this what we do, our version of it, emergent dialogues. But the emergence of this is what really makes a difference. And it’s interesting because what you’re describing, Thomas, is a higher level of individuation actually. Because to be able to have the capacity to, Boehm and Bill Isaacs call it suspend, suspend your cognitive apparatus, your schemas, your routines, your ways of responding, etc. But to be able to hold that in suspension and through mindfulness practice or through whatever meditative practice or larger awareness practice that one has to be able to rest in and open to the field larger than the people. So the field or the intersubjective arena is not just what happens in the center of a circle of people. It is actually something that is much larger than and is holding the whole of the group. And it’s when one can let go of and suspend one’s self-selfing processes and open to this, this space, a different form of intuition begins to arise. That is an intuition that is informed by the whole and one’s own experience. It doesn’t deny one’s experience like that. This is that you’re no longer John. I’m no longer Elizabeth and Thomas is in Thomas. We have these pools of wealth of of of experience and information, but that it becomes then we become used by and available to something that has an intelligence to it that I can’t put my finger on. You know, that it is not something that it’s like, oh, yeah, it’s that. And it’s it’s it’s a kind of left field intuition that that that is that that that guides my responsiveness in in this in this particular context. And so it’s it’s it’s requiring a quite sophisticated discrimination between my individual agenda, experience habits, fears, auto responses, you know, deep, you know, deep instinctive defensive responses, et cetera. From from this and being open to to the intelligence of the field. That’s fantastic. What you said. OK, so I want to I want to see if we can now do a bit of the perhaps bridging to some of the cognitive science around this. But I want to do that with with due reverence. I don’t want to trespass on what we’re talking about here. I don’t want to trespass on the phenomenology and the ontology. That’s not my point. My point is to try and understand this in a way that well, first of all, I’m a scientist and understanding this important phenomena is important. But for people who aren’t interested in it epistemically, there might be a way in which. So please don’t misunderstand what I want to say here. But there’s a way in which many people could hear what we’re talking about and what this is kind of spooky and weird and just strange. And I know you’re both being very careful and very clear. And so I’m not I’m really not insulting you. I’m not. But I what I’m saying is. Perhaps if we could talk about this in cognitive science terms as well, that could remove that. I don’t know what to call it threat or misapprehension, maybe, maybe better misapprehension and afford a more appropriate framing response. Does that seem like sort of possible? Very interesting. Looking forward to hear. So, I mean, so there’s there’s some ideas to begin with here. And one is let’s start with extended cognition. And this is an idea from what’s called for a cognitive science. One of the ease is extended cognition. And and more and more we are coming to the idea of what is called for a cognitive science. And I mean that very concretely. Our ability to solve problems is not born within individuals, but born between individuals and not just individuals or individuals and also perhaps tools and technology, et cetera. We’re using technology right now, for example. Right. Or else we are. We couldn’t be formed without technology. And so I think that’s a very interesting point. And I know, Thomas, there’s some heideggerian things about technology, but I just want to use that because one of the classic examples was Hutchins cognition in the wild really started this idea. And he talked about the navigation of a ship. And no one person navigates a ship. There’s a bunch of people. Right. There’s a bunch of people. And I think that’s a very interesting point. And so, and then the realization is that this is this is predominantly the case for us. Right. And so, I think that’s a very interesting point. And I think that’s a very interesting point. And I think that’s a very interesting point. And I think that’s a very interesting point. And I think that’s a very interesting point. And I think that’s a very interesting point. And I think that’s a very interesting point. And I think that’s a very interesting point. And so, and then the and then the realization is that this is this is predominantly the case for us. And then, and the idea and this is goes to work by my good friend Greg Enriquez, who had real precedence in publication later work by spurber Mercer and others showing that we tend to work better within distributed cognition, I’m going to say something that’s very anti Cartesian here, but right that even our capacity for reasoning. Like, it’s not that it can’t fall into error there’s group, there are group errors to, I’m not proposing any sort of, you know, pristine perfectionism, but our reasoning even works better it looks like it evolved and was designed by evolution to work in conjunction and in dialogue with other people. And I tend to think this was the great Socratic insight and realization that we do better at getting closer to the truth. When we are in these kinds of emergent dialogues than when we try to reason monologically. And so, the discovery of distributed cognition and dialogical reason. And then also dialectical reason and dialectical reason is the idea of sort of a post formal stage in PhD in terms like those so that the PhD model of development, you know this was a bit ends at the idea of basically somebody like PhD scientists capable on their own of individually right but many. Many neo-Pagetians say there’s a possibility of a of a dialectical or post formal stage where people are not just working within a system, but they can stereoscopically integrate. The two together. So you know Einstein takes acceleration and gravity and sees how they’re ultimately the same thing right he looks through the two of them to something deeper. So all of these three are sort of things that are now very current and all of them, I think, provide, I would like some language and again I don’t want to trespass on the phenomenological or existential. But the idea that we can write access distributed cognition that we can enhance reasoning and I use that much broadly, much more broadly than just calculation right that we can enhance reasoning dialogically. And that that can afford us to transcend what we might think as sort of complete systems of thought and into more comprehensive ways of thinking and understanding all of these ideas, I think, are not only respectable but gaining prominence. And I think we could bring them all to bear on what you guys are talking about in emerging dialogue. And I would add some of my own work to that which is the idea that what mindfulness does is it affords insight. And then, when insights. We can also form a self organizing system across time we get flow, and then we can get a flow state between individuals that’s resonating with the flow state within individuals. And that is very germane to what we’ve been talking about because one of the defining features of the flow state is people tend to move off of egocentric perspective onto an auto centric perspective. Which, which isn’t quite the same was what we’ve been talking about, but it’s in the same direction it’s moving people outside of that egocentrism. The possibility of a flow state in distributed cognition that enhances dialect, dialogical reasoning enhances dialectical thinking, understanding, and that right puts people into an optimal level of performance on all of this seems to me eminently plausible within a four E cognitive scientific approach. That’s a lot. Maybe that was too much. What do you guys think about what what I’ve been proposing to. I mean, one thing, this is part of the reason why we are so excited to connect with you. Right. Because, on one hand, we have a lot of technological data that we work with this. And I think that’s a good point. I think that’s a good point. I think that’s a good point. I think that’s a good point. I think that’s a good point. I think that’s a good point. I think that’s a good point. I think that’s a good point. I think that’s a good point. I think that’s a good point. I think that’s a good point. I think that’s a good point. I think that’s a good point. I think that’s a good point. I think that’s a good point. I think that’s a good point. I think that’s a good point. I think that’s a good point. I think that’s a good point. I think that’s a good point. I think that’s a good point. I think that’s a good point. I think that’s a good point. I think that’s a good point. I think that’s a good point. I think that’s a good point. I think that’s a good point. I think that’s as an enlightened open society. So you cannot go back to…it’s easy to talk about this in mythopoethic terms. And the rigor of scientific understanding.But you also have to have the rigor of scientific understanding. And the way you’re describing right now is connecting this also language and methodology that holds the standards of scientific discourse and how this is possible. It’s tremendously important to to make this cultural relevant. Yes, I agree with that. Yeah. And because of this, I think what you bring in with the whole research and all the data that you bring in is tremendously important to understand and interpret this kind of phenomenons that are opening up in different forms of these spaces because what we are doing is just one of them. It’s also interesting because it’s popping up around the globe, so to say. Totally, totally. And I just want to emphasize that. Sorry for interrupting, Thomas. I just want to just flag that. Sorry, but what Thomas said there is so important. And it’s popping up all over the place and it’s often popping up independently. Sometimes it’s through diffusion, but often it’s independent and that speaks to something important. It’s like the development of the eye. Yes, yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Kind of convergent evolution, I think is very much a good analogy there. Yeah, and which is tremendously exciting. I think that’s something that has confirmed to us what we’re doing, not because it’s like when you see there’s the force in culture at the edge of culture, these we spaces and explorations of the we and also the millennial generation being so, I find them within a certain socioeconomic kind of social cluster to be incredibly tuned into this. And yeah, they’re definitely fascinating. Yeah, very responsive to this in powerful ways. Yeah, then I mean, I have to be careful here because my data is confounded in a sense because I’ve explicitly designed my practice to try and speak to the nones, the N-O-N-E-S’s. So the fact that they’re responsive, like that’s not just independent evidence, but nevertheless, it also shouldn’t be ignored, right? There’s some responsiveness there that I think is really important. So there’s one, there’s just one thing I want to add to this, which is just also very hardcore. It’s also the development of technology. Yes, because where we are right now is very different than the times the birth of modernity. Yes. And one of the one of the difference right now is what we’re doing right now is the existence of network reality through the internet, where our form of individuation changes radically. Let’s say one of the main practices in early modernity to basically drain yourself in your individuality was reading novels, reading novels, the capacity to have a book and as an individual on your own, totally, to relate to the individual story of someone else was an inculturation. You learned how to be an individual in a way. And that was a cultural technique that was introduced through technology, through the book and through the novel in early modernity. Right now with the birth of the internet, this kind of draining is radically transformed because all of a sudden for the good and for the bad, we are all the time in some kind of networks and there’s a kind of a network reality opening up through Facebook and everything else. I’m not saying it’s all good. Of course, obviously it’s not. There’s a lot of where we don’t know what we’re doing and it’s kind of where are we going is queuing on the next kind of cultural identity that we are creating. There’s a lot of things going on, but it shows something that distributed cognition is also based on a different form of technological reality that we have to basically also learn not only to live with but to use. And there’s something very powerful also listening to the dialogues that you are having that basically instead of reading someone’s big book, someone has worked for 20 years and then you put it and I’m sitting in my office and reading it. You are in the midst of that dialogical process of intelligence emerging as a distributed emerging reality. That’s a different time that we are in that is also part of I think why this is happening, what is happening right now. Go ahead. Yeah, don’t lose your thought, Elizabeth, because all your thoughts are pearls. But yeah, thank you for that, Thomas, because I mean that brings up and I want everybody to hear what Thomas said about we have a particular way of being that of course we regard as natural because it’s been so successfully internalized and externalized in our culture where we think the narrative of a novel, the narrative and the shape of a novel is the way we are, right? But that was actually born out of a technology that was co-determining and co-emerging with an individuation that was coming out of the Protestant Reformation and the Cartesian Scientific Revolution. And this leads me to something that about again how you know notice how this space you know is breaking down all of the like it’s got the creative emergence like that Socrates cared about you know in speaking but it also has the permanence of writing and people can go back to it again and again. It’s kind of private because I’m in my house, my home and so are you and yet it’s somehow public, right? And so all of these structures that are behind you know the narrative of the novel are being broken down just by the medium itself and as Thomas said there is tremendous danger. We know that this is really you know harming people in a lot of ways. Social media is predominantly bad for people’s mental health and their ethical well-being and existential well-being but there’s tremendous potential here. Now this leads me to the central issue I want to bring up but Elizabeth I’m happy to detour around the point that’s in your mind which is I’ve been having this discussion about right the relationship between narrative and dialogue and dialogus with a lot of people and I’ve been trying to get at something that I’ve now this is not part of in general 40 COGSI it’s not foreign to it but it’s not as prominent as the other points we’ve discussed. This idea that there is something trans narrative that right both more primordial than narrative and trans narrative that is realized in dialogus. There’s something that allows us to step out of that novel narrative that I want an adjective saying like novelistic narratives sorry for the neologism but you know that kind of narrative that is prototypically represented in the novel right that we that what we can we we step out of that and we’re stepping in as you said to a new trans individuation a new way of being that is not bound up in that particular cultural cognitive schema and why that’s important for me is because I mean it’s clearly we know this from developmental psychology it precedes narrative it’s the dialogical relationship between parent and child that makes narrative right possible but it also it goes beyond right it proceeds from narrative because what what I find is a deepening of that flow state in the we space such that I get a profound realization of a capacity that is trans narrative that allows me to move between narratives that moves me into a space outside of those narrative ways of being and allows me to compare them and I see this as a tremendously countercultural move because of the way what we’re seeing right now is people getting locked deeper and deeper and doubling down entrenched within particular narrative frameworks and this causes me a lot of contention with with people often of a religious framework because they have come to well I want to be I want to be very careful here aspects of what they say seem to have come to the conclusion that modernity’s presentation of the individual within the the novelistic narrative is somehow intrinsic to their particular religious framework and I think this points to what we’re all talking about here a kind of sacredness that challenges that monological monomind approach to human being and being in the world sorry but that I just wanted to put that on on the table for us okay I’ve got a lot of responses that are colliding in my yeah yeah in space here um so I think what what’s interesting is that I feel that my sense of of what happens in in the in the the the co-conscious space are kind of like existential imprints you know sort of like a resonance field and a resonance that that that is yes um that that reverberates with our existential mortal situation yes yes and with and with the divinity yeah yeah if you will or and with the eternal yes that that is that is the the that is part of the cosmic fabric yes yes so it’s not a narrative in the sense of a novel no but it’s it’s a there’s a way in which it there there’s an imprint that allows people greater freedom and a different foundation of identity yes yes yes that is not that is not it it’s not a personal identity in in a certain way but it’s not impersonal either no it’s very personal to oneself yes yes but it’s not simply my story it’s more my humanity yes yes keep going please and and in that that there’s a um there’s a capacity to communicate to those who are clinging to a monologic identity yes yes yes because one can hold a field because there is sacredness there there is a sense of the of the ultimate in in this kind of resonance very much very much and one’s grounding in that ultimate and trust in it because one experiences at a deep level that it is inherently trustworthy um and yet it’s uh one doesn’t have to do anything for it it is it is our birthright yeah yes but but that that that deeper that deeper identification with the these dimensions of ourselves gives one’s flexibility in relationship to ideology in relationship to to uh story stories allows for a lot of flexibility but at and at the same time because there is this reverence for the existential for the human dilemma yes of mortality that there’s a way in which that can hold the hold a space that is recognized by people of faith as having some quality to it that is what they mean by the holy or whatever it is that that they hold dear yeah and so there’s there’s i i see think you know there’s a potential in this culturally to be able to kind of calm down the agitation yes yes that so many fundamentalists uh you know of of all different stripes yeah have um around meaning meaningfulness because this is also inherently meaningful and and that there’s a way in which that there that that were this to be more a grant a cultural ground that you could see that that that there would be a a space for people to have their monological narrative this is i think part of what thomas means by the open society yes yes you know that we can have this plurality held in a depth of of of of unity and and interest and curiosity which also if it may come in here leads to a to a distinction that we just came to recently and we’re quite excited about it to make a distinction between we spaces between identity based we spaces and open we spaces right right and to see how they’re completely technological different because you you come from and it can be an individual identity but it can be also group identity but an open we space is our has a different starting point it starts with presencing yeah with everything that’s present and be open to that and that is a very powerful uh starting point for a dialogical process but also for how we create society so there’s something where i feel also that goes very different i just want to touch it we have the foundations of open society can be thought in a much deeper way than we usually do it we are basically the openness of the open society has a sacredness to it yes yes that we are able to meet without 10 commandments or a pope or an emperor but we today that there’s a meeting but something can be created between us and held just by being present together and there’s a lot of trust needed for that and to be able to do that and maturity that needs health has something that is of the fundamental existential importance for creating open societies and i would like to bring something in that is important of in the way of became important the way we understand our work although we didn’t start there which is which is late heideggerian thinking of what he calls the fourfold yes yes yes and heidegger i mean there’s a lot to say he is also his problematic sides of course and it has to be mentioned that this is the case but there’s something that he always tried to understand the the human experience beyond the subject subject object divide that’s basically his starting point and his critique of modernistic critique of the card is exactly this divide and already the young heidegger is with time and being his concept of design being there is an understanding of humaneness it’s not my i’m conscious now in the world but humaneness is defined by my being thereness yes yes which is already if you just go with the thought being thereness something different happens to you and you go with the phenomenological effect and the late heidegger that by the way is also interesting because the late heidegger through his students came a lot in touch also with eastern ontology yes yes yeah always and send ontology and that academic discourse is not you don’t hear a lot about in academic discourse that the tiger did that and he came up with something that are we find very interesting for dialogical spaces which he called the fourfold that every presence that’s a little bit our interpretation of him just to make it short every presence basically is held in in four dimensions and he used kind of a mythopoetic language for it but he has a very philosophical thought behind it he said earth sky the mortals and divinities yes the way we understand in which we find very fruitful to understand any kind of collective presencing is that every every now is standing on something and there’s something that starts with the physical setting we are helped by earth but also it starts on culture uh history our conversation stands already on the relationship that we have built yes yeah and the next conversation we will have this what we are doing right now is already the earth it will stand on and what a present is standing on also determines what it’s open to this is the sky factor every every day every present has an openness and only when you have a clear sensing of where you stand on together you get a clear sense of what you open to and this allows you to be there here in the conversation in a very different way because it’s not where i am or where you are it’s this situation standing on something this dialogue is opening to something and then the other two things just to mention them because we try to play with it but we find it very very useful and he talks about the mortals uh he talks about that this conversation like every every presence is is from the human experience occurring in time and it’s it’s it’s it’s not there’s an end to it and it’s not just our human end end of our life this conversation will end in a couple of minutes or yeah yeah so that changes the experience of the now to be aware because this allows also be aware that certain things are appropriate to say in the beginning of a conversation certain things are appropriate to say in the end of the conversation so that the form becomes full that’s that there’s something that the present changes when you’re aware of time and the ending of everything then what he calls the divinities is the way we understand it he he talks about the divinities as the messengers of the sacred yes yes yes and to be aware that every present moment shows up very different when you uh when you’re aware that it’s not it’s not just trivial what’s happening between us it has the potential to be deeply meaningful and the form of most deeply meaningful is equal to being sacred and then the way I look to our dialogue is very different when I mean I look for what is the deeply meaningful potential of this yeah I really like this and helped by this this conversation shows up different in way in my experience that makes it very powerful to uh to look at this and one one one little bit more that that these that that the awareness that every presence every and every now every collective presence and every now has these different dimensions to it that are not object object dimensions but are subjective intersubjective dimensions hones one’s relevance realization yes capacity yes thank you for that connection yes because when when you when you are thankfully when when when when these are the dimensions that one that one has thrown open in a sense or or given given space in a in a in a dialogue then then selecting what is most relevant for one’s participation it it helps it helps guide one’s participation into this place that is beyond subject object and that is that is alive with this sacredness so there’s a couple things there uh again now you did the same thing you guys did the same thing back to me um so one is you know this idea that we can move beyond egocentrism to to to to being democentric the people like demos right the like in democracy right the idea that we can form a distributed self-organizing system by which we can govern ourselves right and I mean stuff and I mean that’s what I mean by a democentric way of being and then that democentric is ultimately in reverential relationship to you know an ontocentric you know uh you know and that made me think of uh you know I think a philosophical school that all of us I would wreck all of us in the in the dialogical community should be paying more attention to is the Kyoto school precisely because of that bridging between east and west and and and Nishitani’s definition of religion as real self as the real self-realization of reality then that plugs into right what you just said Elizabeth there’s a there’s a way in which the relevance realization goes from being my relevant realization or how things are relevant to me and even beyond how they’re relevant to you about how all of this relevance realization is somehow right helping is orienting and disclosing a way of being to us that is otherwise not available to us and so I keep coming back to this notion that we we I think we need to do a phenomenological and functional revalorization of which was the association between the sacred and glory and as soon as I say glory people that are off because they they think of what we’ve turned glory into which is just the self-engra the self-aggrandizement of an individual but what people forget for example is the term most frequently used of God in the Bible is glory beyond righteous right and that’s related to the original Greek phenomenon that which shines forth right and this and and and and the idea that the relevance realization machinery can be so transfigured so that right there is right the there’s the salience landscaping becomes if you’ll allow me and I hope this can now be heard right the glorification of being rather than right that makes us fall deeply in love with being for no instrumental or egocentric purpose and and that to me is something that has the capacity to challenge the the the very powerful movement towards the increasing like shallowing of our salience landscaping so that we can increasingly be manipulated by political and socioeconomic groups and individuals who do not have our best interest at heart and that’s what I mean when I talk about stealing the culture get people to experience that and to experience the liberation that it makes possible that’s what gives me hope when I look at at the world very much so I would like to add something what you’re describing only can be done in practice and together yes yeah much really to the distributed sense realization it’s something that that’s power that’s where I see if you allow this term that dialogue is a spiritual practice yeah because this deep meaning making shows up in the dialogical space as an undeniable phenomenon yes and you see and you see that you can you can and you have to hold this in openness and you cannot do it on your own you’re completely interdependent on each other it’s a space that has to be cultivated but in that relevant civilization shows up yes and I see in this a cultural practice allows us also to to do this in a way where we go beyond our kind of cut off individuality to one-sidedness that they use and then kind of relate everything to that and find a new form of communal experience that in the sense at the same time is not kind of romantic it’s very critical rational you can really think in a very scientific way that’s why your work is also so important to that and just the way you also use the word relevance realization because it excuse me if I say that it sounds so technical relevance realization in one way but it touches it touches the deepest in your soul yeah yeah and the way you describe it and also your meaning making series how you kind of work it out in another conversation it’s also very obvious how this is not something that is a beautiful religious idea how this is very connectable to the most critical scientific thinking how we understand in a modern enlightened way reality but it is at the same time something beyond that yes because it’s the livings something that opens up in discourse in dialogs and this I find is something that shows us as a potential that we can go as a culture beyond where we are and this is also the other term that we like it’s very much is that distilling the culture thing because this is done not by kind of creating political powers is is done by collective practice that the exe that is exactly and that collective practice is is revelatory yes yes it’s revelatory and that’s what we mean by emergent yeah yeah you know that that meaning is emerges from it so it’s not a set of ideas or an ideology that’s being brought to bear on on our social situation or whatever it is it is birthing itself yes as we as we engage which which is a very different different ground of culture you know that we’re that we’re that we’re sense making as we go and we’re all it’s it’s also that therefore deeply democratic in that it because it calls us to together in in making making sense out of what is revealed through you could call it the shining very much and so I mean and I your vision on this is one I really want to emphasize because I in deep agreement with it that I think this is where we have to look if we want to reground democracy trying to ground democracy in identity politics or or or or sort of socio-economic productivity or or the power of the state all of the things we’ve tried I think are I think we’ve got clear evidence that those are failed attempts to ground democracy and I fear that people are now coming to the conclusion Plato’s conclusion that perhaps democracy doesn’t work but I think democracy deserves another chance and I think I think we we could there’s no teleology here for me but I think there’s the real potential for us to co-create together a re-grounding of democracy and what Thomas I think is referring to in an open society in connection with that I want to ask because I see something else emerging and it’s just at the edge of sort of both the the the cognitive science and and sort of the psychotherapeutic so you know you know you see in Don Quixote and and the emerging of the novels you see this structure and then you see you know in Victorian novels you see people more and more internalizing it right so right you see this loop it’s a kind of cognitive niche construction so much so that we now think it that’s just the way human beings are right it’s been so internalized but I see the glimmering of people starting to internalize into the structure of the self if you’ll allow me that language which a contentious term but I don’t have another term right now they’re starting to internalize this network this dynamical network model of the self so for example it’s happening more more and more like the mind and consciousness and the self are seen as a dynamical system self-organizing things rather than as monadic substances and then you see this being taken into transformative practice in the in the growing emergence and convergence of of dialogical psychotherapies like internal family systems theory a lot of emotion-focused therapy involves you know you know empty chair work that then gets taken back in and internalized right into the person you’ve got within philosophy more and more people talking about how the self is aspirational in nature it’s inherently dialogical all right and so I see that there is well kind of like the title of the anthology that there’s in addition to the emergence of what we could call outer dialogue or dialogos I see more and more people proposing to you know schwarz and falconer and others that we get out of what they call the mono mind frame that we stop thinking of mono mind and other people saying we need to get out of the monophasic that there’s one sort of state of consciousness that gives us access to reality and all other states should be rejected and that so what I’m seeing is that there is there’s emerging practices of communities that are to look to me I’m not sure about this but look to me like something analogous to what’s happening with Cervantes and the internalization of the novel as the way in which we are to something where we’re internal we’re starting to seriously consider and practice and be transformed by the proposal that we can internalize this network I don’t quite like that term because it sounds too much like wires but please let me have it for now I mean but or maybe your right or community model perhaps into the sense of the self that I think is resonant with everything we’re talking about um intersubjectively I don’t want to deny what you guys have just said about how this is fundamentally what we’re talking about is intersubjective and also you know transjective I would say but I think there’s there’s a there’s a corresponding revolution beginning in the intra subjective and this to me goes back to the platonic model right it’s very platonic in its origin it’s very dialogical you know Socrates is not only doing Socratic dialogue he talks about right he has his daemon right and he has the internal dialogue always running and there’s deep relationships between them at all times and so I wonder if I wonder if you guys are catching first of all maybe you just don’t agree with what I said and that’s fine but and I’m doing a lot of participant experimentation in these modalities I’m practicing IFS right now I’m really trying to understand what’s going on in this um and is is that perhaps the corresponding resonant poll for trans individuation which is not only the internal the realization of an external dialogous but internal dialogous I mean because the thing sorry I’ll say one more thing and then I’ll shut up because I I’m finding in my participant experimentation in the transformations is that that undermines the Cartesian framework in a way different from but consonant with the way the external dialogous undermines the Cartesian framework I um I haven’t really thought about what you’re what you’re saying before but it was it was an object of fascination for me in graduate school so that was quite some time ago right but um but Schwartz’s work on the internal family systems and and what uh Hal and whatever her name is um Siller um their voice dialogue work yeah um I think that they they they deconstruct the the monological self yes but what I found so important about Schwartz’s work on internal family systems is that he says and this I think is what becomes essential in a practice like ours that that there’s always a part of the self that knows and that is not touched by the trauma and the the the the the trauma of the that the individual has lived through because internal family systems theory is is a is a practice that or is is a therapeutic modality that’s often used in cases of extreme dissociation because of extreme trauma um but it works wonderfully for us normal neurotics so which is powerful that’s very powerful it’s very powerful but it has that grasp yeah so what I’m suggesting and it’s just a suggestion we’re trying to bring like what what internal family internal family systems theories calls in a post Jungian fashion the self right was a capital S right that that sense of you know what Proclus would call the one within that right I find there’s a deep affinity you know something stronger than even an analogy and you know right something stronger that a finding reciprocal opening between the we space and the way itself integrates and organizes and that that that within the psyche that is also moving towards right the integration and that gives us a doorway to the eternal within and then and you and I see in neo-platinism the the like in the practices of theurgy and theoria an attempt to try and get the to get these two dialogues into kind of a meta dialogue and and I I maybe I’m reading too much into things but I see something happening as a as a real potential well it’s interesting because I think that there are different levels of internal voice dialogue some is with traumatisers and and split off parts and so forth and and one to engage in a practice like this one needs to have be able to abide in that self that is not been touched very much very much in order yeah in order to be able to not get caught up by you know a flamethrowers like a distress or or get rattled within with you know in in in the practice at that so that’s a high level of again a high level of discrimination and of self-development to be able to to be able to abide there and and also and not repress because and allow the other voices of the of the split off parts of oneself which we all have to to know what they are to have some familiarity with them that one can not not be caught up in them and be available to this this capital as self and the the the the intersubjective intelligence yeah so that I mean that’s part of how but then but then there is voice dialogue work that also deals with at a more archetypal level yes and and there’s a way of seeing one’s own experience within a more you could call it archetypal or a human as a human phenomenon rather than a self as an individual phenomenon totally totally and and in that’s a space for emergent dialogue yes yeah and that and that is a place where where beautiful and extraordinary things happen because one contributes one’s archetypal dilemma or one’s archetypal wisdom or to to the the the the the conversation as a whole that allows then a different a different a different wisdom a different existential you know resonance to take place so well yes that’s fantastic and I’ve been doing some uh you know looking at some of rave’s work on on on that kind of archetypal aspect but but I guess what I’m saying and maybe it sounds like you’re agreeing uh like the phenomenologically right when when when you’re doing the practice there’s this kind of dual this isn’t quite right but this is like like there’s kind of a dual consciousness between you know the self and the part when you’re doing ifs that I find very like very that’s very affinitive to that kind of place where you you don’t lose you know I don’t lose being john in dialogos but but there’s a but there’s also the we which is more encompassing and more grounding and it’s actually the center from which things are happening and I find the deep analogy right more than an analogy the affining analogy between them I find that they’re the phenomenological resonance between them it’s just something that’s exciting me right now I guess is all I’m saying and and I like there’s the potential here um because if we can take if we can if we can show people how to internalize this that’s another dimension of our practice that will strengthen the transformative power of the practice I I think this is the cutting edge because this is also a learning process of this identification and learning in a new interiority yeah and I want I want to parallelize it with something that Elizabeth and I just talked the other day of which I think is related to that and is so part of his relationship to the diamond oh wow because because I mean you you know better than than the many basically he was accused uh uh to introduce new gods yes that’s the that’s the church yeah and in our interpretations the the accusation is that he was introducing the diamond diamond yeah and and the diamond in itself is the god of individuality yes that that he was speaking to and the story is that he was was was ongoingly uh in conversation with this diamond which was his own inner otherness let’s call it yeah but this was an inculturation of individuality that hasn’t existed before and it seems that we on the other end of this uh development after two and a half thousand years I I do in a reverse practice yeah basically I’ll try this again network is not a great not a great word for it but there’s something that we’re touching into and learning to identify with something that we’re not used to what it is that’s beautiful what you just said and I like that I like that helpful comparison and contrast with the Socratic uh daemon um and we would we would we would probably call the daemon arrows um um Socrates would be okay with that I think Socrates would be very okay with that um well I I guys I think this is a good place to maybe pause because I’m hoping you both of you will be will be willing to come back and we’ll have another voices with Reveke together but I mean getting to the cutting edge is it is a good place to end for now to end for now but I wanted to give both of you an opportunity to like uh you know uh any further things you want to say any way of you know pointing people uh to your work you guys will send me all right I keep trying to change that you folks will send me um links uh so people can find your work uh but you know anything you want to say now both to the to the dialogue we’ve had or just in general um please feel free to do that right now anything Sonia my hmm we’re well that I mean we can we’ve got a new website in process it’s going to be called evolve world yeah and and is also going to be in english as well as german and uh we we’re really we’re also running a really big experiment right now we’re we’re leading a course of over 200 people yeah in immersion dialogue and we have a facilitation team that is trying to learn how to really work with this of about 18 people so we’re super psyched about that it it’s it’s a it’s it’s really a step a big step uh for for this work and um and we’ll probably run it again next year but but right now we’re in the middle of it but we’re looking to to to network with you know with with with other ways and other we ways exactly and just so much to say about it but just to mention it the other work that we do this evolve magazine basically where we we try to introduce cultural themes like we are talking about right now with bringing people together in general language but the idea of the magazine is a dialogical instrument we want to put this in the landscape and we have around 30 evolve salons dialogical salons where readers discuss this yeah and the whole idea is not to kind of bring the right perspective in there but to to induce a dialogue in the in the cultural and use the means of a print magazine and there’s a reason why we still print because there’s something you have your hand and there’s a relationship to art but the whole idea is to create a culture where we are able to synergize and to use means of synergizing that’s kind of what we try to do and uh there’s a lot to say we could say about the magazine and why we do this in this way but this is the other side of the book maybe in another time yeah well definitely let’s another time for sure and I want to hear about what happens in the experiment I’m very in the way you two know that I’m very interested in how that unfolds so Thomas and it was one last thing oh one last thing we are very convinced that what were you talking about right now only really it evolves it comes to itself as a v space of v spaces yes yes I agree with that and that’s that’s that’s the core of it and we have to find a way how to do this globally and and your your your your conversation to awake your dialogues center point of this right now so thank you for doing this thank you I mean and I’m doing some participant experimentation with uh with Greg and then with Greg and Chris Greg and Ricketts Christopher Massa Pietro in trying to integrate you know the sort of progressive argumentation you need when you’re doing science with with dialogos as a practice of emergence intelligibility and to put Schiancia and Sapientia back together again in a practice and you know and it’s kind of clunky uh but I’m enjoying it and people seem to be getting something out of those two things and so that’s my that’s my that’s my ongoing experiment right now and I’m happy to follow follow it as it goes and actually if you if you if you want a group of people who have a great sensitivity to the the the shared space to experiment with with your new process we’d be happy to to pull something we’re gonna do yeah we’re gonna make that happen and hopefully also you know we will be relit we will be released from this the grip of this old testament deity kovat and we’ll be able to uh you know I’ll be able to come and visit with you two and great super super so thank you so much we will definitely talk again thank you so much Thomas and Elizabeth it’s always always wonderful to yeah I always get so caught up in it and enthusiastic and theos right and theos right I get uh very very uh when I’m talking uh with you too so much love yeah love to you take good care we will talk again for sure great for sure great thank you bye bye